Chicago Board of Trade rice futures ended mostly higher on Thursday after November raced to a 3-1/2 year top and all deferreds set new contract highs on heavy speculative buying, traders said.

The gains followed Wednesday's higher close after the U.S. Department of Agriculture raised its U.S. 2003 rice exports estimate and cut its 2003 rice end-stocks forecast, brokers said.

CBOT rough rice futures ended on Thursday up 41 cents per hundredweight to down 1 cent, with November rough rice up 41 cents at $8.30 and January up 39-1/2 cents at $8.47-1/2 per cwt.

November rough rice raced to a new high of $8.30, the highest level on continuous charts since February 1999, while January hit a new top at $8.49 per cwt.

"There was huge fund and speculative buying," one CBOT rice trader said. "There was also local short-covering and scale-up commercial selling."

The gains built on Wednesday's rally after the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast a 2003/04 U.S. rice crop of 198.2 million cwt, slightly above its October estimate of 197.3 million cwt.

The production estimate was still well below the estimated 2002/03 U.S. total rice production of 211 million cwt.

The USDA on Wednesday also boosted its 2003/04 U.S. rice export estimate to 95 million cwt from its October estimate of 91 million and lowered its 2003/04 U.S. ending rice stocks estimate to 22.0 million cwt from its October estimate of 24.9 million cwt.

In CBOT rice delivery news, there were 36 deliveries posted on Thursday against CBOT November rough rice, which expires on Tuesday, Nov. 18. A customer of USA Trading stopped 19 lots.